Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Politics & Social Sciences

We all have things we rely on going our way to help us feel calm and happy. Your partner waking up in a good mood. No traffic on the way to work. No queues at the supermarket. And no rain on your day off. But what happens when things don’t work out that way? We fall back on soothing habits. A trip to the cupboard for snacks. Scrolling on social media. A few beers or a couple of glasses of wine after a stressful day.

The Power Broker tells the story of Robert Moses, the single most powerful man in New York for almost half a century and the greatest builder America (and probably the world) has ever known. Without ever once being elected to office, he created for himself a position of supreme and untouchable authority, allowing him to utterly reshape the city of New York, turning it into the city we know today, while at the same time blighting the lives of millions and remaining accountable to no one.

In We Who Wrestle with God, Jordan Peterson guides us through the ancient, foundational stories of the Western world, analyzing the Biblical accounts of rebellion, sacrifice, suffering and triumph that stabilize, inspire and unite us, culturally and psychologically.

In Unruly, David Mitchell explores how early England's monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects' destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky sods who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear to us today in their portraits.

On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Princes Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens. A tense six-day siege ensued as millions gathered around screens across the country to witness the longest news flash in British television history, in which police negotiators and psychiatrists sought a bloodless end to the standoff, while the SAS – hitherto an organisation shrouded in secrecy – laid plans for a daring rescue mission: Operation Nimrod.

Stories brought us together. Books spread our ideas – and our mythologies. The internet promised infinite knowledge. The algorithm learned our secrets – and then turned us against each other. What will AI do? NEXUS is the thrilling account of how we arrived at this moment, and the urgent choices we must now make to survive – and to thrive.

Over the course of a decade from 2010, Rory Stewart went from being a political outsider to standing for prime minister - before being sacked from a Conservative Party that he had come to barely recognise.

Comprised of four weeks of extended reflections on inspiring quotations — drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help — this audiobook is the perfect companion during a time of turbulence and pervasive anxiety: a source of solace and enlightenment, inspiration and insight, and humour and provocation. The result is a winking challenge to the usual self-help platitudes — a surprising and entertaining crash course in living meaningfully.

Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken footballs on the streets of East London in the shadow of Canary Wharf's skyscrapers, Gary wanted something better. Something a whole lot bigger. Then he won a competition run by a bank: 'The Trading Game'. The prize: a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader in the whole city. A place where you could make more money than you'd ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional maths geniuses, overfed public schoolboys and borderline psychopaths, yet they start to feel like family.

It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow - and horror. As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling - and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last.

Written in Greek by an intellectual Roman emperor without any intention of publication, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a wide range of fascinating spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the leader struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. Spanning from doubt and despair to conviction and exaltation, they cover such diverse topics as the question of virtue, human rationality, the nature of the gods and Aurelius's own emotions.

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency - a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

Alexei Navalny began writing PATRIOT shortly after his near-fatal poisoning in 2020. It is the full story of his life: his youth, his call to activism, his marriage and family, his commitment to challenging a world super-power determined to silence him, and his total conviction that change cannot be resisted – and will come. Written with the passion, wit, candour and bravery for which he was justly acclaimed, PATRIOT is Navalny’s final letter to the world: a moving account of his last years spent in the most brutal prison on earth.

As the country's top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right - and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?

In Ta-Nehisi Coates's keenly anticipated new book, The Message, he explores the urgent question of how our stories – our reporting, imaginative narratives and mythmaking – both expose and distort our realities. Travelling to three resonant sites of conflict, he illuminates how the stories we tell – as well as the ones we don’t – work to shape us.

As the middle of five kids growing up in dire poverty, the odds were low on Katriona O'Sullivan making anything of her life. She became a mother at 15 and ended up homeless. Five rackety years followed - barely coping, drinking to escape - until Katriona, now living in her father's native Dublin, hit rock bottom. Poor is the extraordinary story - moving, funny, brave, and sometimes startling - of how Katriona turned her life around.

Humanity now, perhaps more than in any previous time, has an opportunity to create a new, saner, more loving world. This will involve a radical inner leap from the current egoic consciousness to an entirely new one. In illuminating the nature of this shift in consciousness, Tolle describes in detail how our current ego-based state of consciousness operates. Then gently, and in very practical terms, he leads us into this new consciousness. We will come to experience who we truly are and learn to live and breathe freely.

The first rule of nuclear war is that there are no rules. Up to now, no one outside of official circles has known exactly what would happen if a rogue state launched a nuclear missile at the Pentagon. Second by second and minute by minute, these are the real-life protocols that choreograph the end of civilisation as we know it. Because the plans for General Nuclear War are among the most classified secrets held by the United States government, this book takes the listener up to the razor’s edge of what can legally be known.

We are about to cross a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon we will live surrounded by AIs. They will carry out complex tasks-operating businesses, producing unlimited digital content, running core government services and maintaining infrastructure. This will be a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. It represents nothing less than a step change in human capability. We are not prepared.

Sapiens showed us where we came from. Homo Deus looked to the future. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century explores the present. How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war, ecological cataclysms and technological disruptions? What can we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? What should we teach our children? Yuval Noah Harari takes us on a thrilling journey through today’s most urgent issues.